“‘I MEANT TO TAKE SOME FLOWERS, ANYWAY’”“‘I MEANT TO TAKE SOME FLOWERS, ANYWAY’”
“Do you mind?” she asked, but she had not meant to say that, and she walked a little more quickly to escape the quick reply.
“I want to ask you something,” he said, after a moment’s brisk walking. “I wish—if you don’t mind—I wish you would walk around the square with me—just once—”
“Certainly not,” she said; “and now you will say good-bye—because you are going away, you say.” She had stopped at the Fourth Avenue edge of the square. “So good-bye, and thank you for the beautiful dog, and for the violets.”
“But you won’t keep the dog, and you won’t keep the violets,” he said; “and, besides, if you are going north—”
“Good-bye,” she repeated, smiling.
“—besides,” he went on, “I would like to know where you are going.”
“That,” she said, “is what I do not wish to tell you—or anybody.”
There was a brief silence; the charm of her bent head distracted him.
“If you won’t go,” she said, with caprice, “I will walk once around the square with you, but it is the silliest thing I have ever done in my entire life.”
“Why won’t you keep the bull-terrier?” he asked, humbly.
“Because I’m going north—for one reason.”
“Couldn’t you take His Highness?”
“No—that is, I could, but—I can’t explain—he would distract me.”
“Shall I take him back, then?”
“Why?” she demanded, surprised.
“I—only I thought if you did not care for him—” he stammered. “You see, I love the dog.”
She bit her lip and bent her eyes on the ground. Again he quickened his pace to keep step with her.
“You see,” he said, searching about for the right phrase, “I wanted you to have something that I could venture to offer you—er—something not valuable—er—I mean not—er—”
“Your dog is a very valuable champion; everybody knows that,” she said, carelessly.
“Oh yes—he’s a corker in his line; out of Empress by Ameer, you know—”
“I might manage … to keep him … for a while,” she observed, without enthusiasm. “At all events, I shall tie my violets to his collar.”
He watched her; the roar of Broadway died out in his ears; in hers it grew, increasing, louder, louder. A dim scene rose unbidden before her eyes—the high gloom of a cathedral, the great organ’s first unsteady throbbing—her wedding-march! No, not that; for while she stood, coldly transfixed in centred self-absorption, she seemed to see a shapeless mass of wreaths piled in the twilight of an altar—the dreadful pomp and panoply and circumstance of death—
She raised her eyes to the man beside her; her whole being vibrated with the menace of a dirge, and in the roar of traffic around her she divined the imprisoned thunder of the organ pealing for her dead.
She turned her head sharply towards the west.
“What is it?” he asked, in the voice of a man who needs no answer to his question.
She kept her head steadily turned. Through FifteenthStreet the sun poured a red light that deepened as the mist rose from the docks. She heard the river whistles blowing; an electric light broke out through the bay haze.
It was true she was thinking of her husband—thinking of him almost desperately, distressed that already he should have become to her nothing more vital than a memory.
Unconscious of the man beside her, she stood there in the red glow, straining eyes and memory to focus both on a past that receded and seemed to dwindle to a point of utter vacancy.
Then her husband’s face grew out of vacancy, so real, so living, that she started—to find herself walking slowly past the fountain with Langham at her side.
After a moment she said: “Now we have walked all around the square. Now I am going to walk home; … and thank you … for my walk, … which was probably as wholesome a performance as I could have indulged in—and quite unconventional enough, even for you.”
They faced about and traversed the square, crossed Broadway in silence, passed through the kindling shadows of the long cross-street, and turned into Fifth Avenue.
“You are very silent,” she said, sorry at once that she had said it, uncertain as to the trend his speech might follow, and withal curious.
“It was only about that dog,” he said.
She wondered if it was exactly that, and decided it was not. It was not. He was thinking of her husband as he had known him—only by sight and by report.He remembered the florid gentleman perfectly; he had often seen him tooling his four; he had seen him at the traps in Monte Carlo, dividing with the best shot in Italy; he had seen him riding to hounds a few days before that fatal run of the Shadowbrook Hunt, where he had taken his last fence. Once, too, he had seen him at the Sagamore Angling Club up state.
“When are you going?” he said, suddenly.
“To-morrow.”
“I am not to know where?”
“Why should you?” and then, a little quickly: “No, no. It is a pilgrimage.”
“When you return—” he began, but she shook her head.
“No, … no. I do not know where I may be.”
In the April twilight the electric lamps along the avenue snapped alight. The air rang with the metallic chatter of sparrows.
They mounted the steps of her house; she turned and swept the dim avenue with a casual glance.
“So you, too, are going north?” she asked, pleasantly.
“Yes—to-night.”
She gave him her hand. She felt the pressure of his hand on her gloved fingers after he had gone, although their hands had scarcely touched at all.
And so she went into the dimly lighted house, through the drawing-room, which was quite dark, into the music-room beyond; and there she sat down upon a chair by the piano—a little gilded chair that revolved as she pushed herself idly, now to the right, now to the left.
Yes, … after all, she would go; … she would make that pilgrimage to the spot on earth her husband loved best of all—the sweet waters of the Sagamore, where his beloved club lodge stood, and whither, for a month every year, he had repaired with some old friends to renew a bachelor’s love for angling.
She had never accompanied him on these trips; she instinctively divined a man’s desire for a ramble among old haunts with old friends, freed for a brief space from the happy burdens of domesticity.
The lodge on the Sagamore was now her shrine; there she would rest and think of him, follow his footsteps to his best-loved haunts, wander along the rivers where he had wandered, dream by the streams where he had dreamed.
She had married her husband out of awe, sheer awe for his wonderful personality. And he was wonderful; faultless in everything—though not so faultless as to be in bad taste, she often told herself. Hisentouragealso was faultless; and the general faultlessness of everything had made her married life very perfect.
As she sat thinking in the darkened music-room, something stirred in the hallway outside. She raised her eyes; the white bull-terrier stood in the lighted doorway, looking in at her.
A perfectly incomprehensible and resistless rush of loneliness swept her to her feet; in a moment she was down on the floor again, on her silken knees, her arms around the dog, her head pressed tightly to his head.
“Oh,” she said, choking, “I must go to-morrow—I must—I must.… And here are the violets; … I will tie them to your collar.… Hold still!… He loves you;… but you shall not have them—do you hear?… No, no, … for I shall wear them, … for I like their odor; … and, anyway, … I am going away.”…
The next day she began her pilgrimage; and His Highness went with her; and a maid from the British Isles.
She had telegraphed to the Sagamore Club for rooms, to make sure, but that was unnecessary, because there were at the moment only three members of the club at the lodge.
Now although she herself could scarcely be considered a member of the Sagamore Angling Club, she still controlled her husband’s shares in the concern, and she was duly and impressively welcomed by the steward. Two of the three members domiciled there came up to pay their respects when she alighted from the muddy buckboard sent to the railway to meet her; they were her husband’s old friends, Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, white-haired, purple-faced, well-groomed gentlemen in the early fifties. The third member was out in the rain fishing somewhere down-stream.
“New man here, madam—a good fellow, but a bad rod—eh, Brent?”
“Bad rod,” repeated Major Brent, wagging his fat head. “Uses ferrules to a six-ounce rod.Wesplice—eh, Colonel?”
“Certainly,” said the Colonel.
“‘HERE ARE THE VIOLETS; … I WILL TIE THEM TO YOUR COLLAR’”“‘HERE ARE THE VIOLETS; … I WILL TIE THEM TO YOUR COLLAR’”
She stood by the open fire in the centre of the hallway, holding her shapely hands out towards the blaze, while her maid relieved her of the wet rain-coat.
“Splice what, Colonel Hyssop, if you please?” she inquired, smiling.
“Splice our rods, madam—no creaky joints and ferrules for old hands like Major Brent and me, ma’am. Do you throw a fly?”
“Oh no,” she said, with a faint smile. “I—I do nothing.”
“Except to remain the handsomest woman in the five boroughs!” said the Major, with a futile attempt to bend at the waist—utterly unsuccessful, yet impressive.
She dropped him a courtesy, then took the glass of sherry that the steward brought and sipped it, meditative eyes on the blazing logs. Presently she held out the empty wine-glass; the steward took it on his heavy silver salver; she raised her eyes. A half-length portrait of her husband stared at her from over the mantel, lighted an infernal red in the fire-glow.
A catch in her throat, a momentary twitch of the lips, then she gazed calmly up into the familiar face.
Under the frame of the picture was written his full hyphenated name; following that she read:
President and FounderofThe Sagamore Angling Club1880–1901
Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop observed her in decorously suppressed sympathy.
“I did not know he was president,” she said, after a moment; “he never told me that.”
“Those who knew him best understood his rare modesty,” said Major Brent. “I knew him, madam; I honored him; I honor his memory.”
“He was not only president and founder,” observed Colonel Hyssop, “but he owned three-quarters of the stock.”
“Are the shares valuable?” she asked. “I have them; I should be glad to give them to the club, Colonel Hyssop—in his memory.”
“Good gad! madam,” said the Colonel, “the shares are worth five thousand apiece!”
“I am the happier to give them—if the club will accept,” she said, flushing, embarrassed, fearful of posing as a Lady Bountiful before anybody. She added, hastily, “You must direct me in the matter, Colonel Hyssop; we can talk of it later.”
Again she looked up into her husband’s face over the mantel.
Her bull-terrier came trotting into the hall, his polished nails and padded feet beating a patter across the hardwood floor.
“I shall dine in my own rooms this evening,” she said, smiling vaguely at the approaching dog.
“We hoped to welcome you to the club table,” cried the Major.
“There are only the Major and myself,” added the Colonel, with courteous entreaty.
“And the other—the new man,” corrected the Major, with a wry face.
“Oh yes—the bad rod. What’s his name?”
“Langham,” said the Major.
The English maid came down to conduct her mistress to her rooms; the two gentlemen bowed as their build permitted; the bull-terrier trotted behind his mistress up the polished stairs. Presently a door closed above.
“Devilish fine woman,” said Major Brent.
Colonel Hyssop went to a mirror and examined himself with close attention.
“Good gad!” he said, irritably, “how thin my hair is!”
“Thin!” said Major Brent, with an unpleasant laugh; “thin as the hair on a Mexican poodle.”
“You infernal ass!” hissed the Colonel, and waddled off to dress for dinner. At the door he paused. “Better have no hair than a complexion like a violet!”
“What’s that?” cried the Major.
The Colonel slammed the door.
Up-stairs the bull-terrier lay on a rug watching his mistress with tireless eyes. The maid brought tea, bread and butter, and trout fried crisp, for her mistress desired nothing else.
Left alone, she leaned back, sipping her tea, listening to the million tiny voices of the night. The stillness of the country made her nervous after the clatter of town. Nervous? Was it the tranquil stillness of the night outside that stirred that growing apprehension in her breast till, of a sudden, her heart began a deadened throbbing?
Langham here? What was he doing here? He must have arrived this morning. So that was where he was going when he said he was going north!
After all, in what did it concern her? She had not run away from town to avoid him, … indeed not, … her pilgrimage was her own affair. And Langham would very quickly divine her pious impulse in coming here.… And he would doubtless respect her for it.… Perhaps have the subtle tact to pack up his traps and leave.… But probably not.… She knew a little about Langham, … an obstinate and typical man, … doubtless selfish to the core, … cheerfully, naïvely selfish.…
She raised her troubled eyes. Over the door was printed in gilt letters:
The President’s Suite.
Tears filled her eyes; truly they were kindly and thoughtful, these old friends of her husband.
And all night long she slept in the room of her late husband, the president of the Sagamore Angling Club, and dreamed till daybreak of … Langham.
Langham, clad in tweeds from head to foot, sat on the edge of his bed.
He had been sitting there since daybreak, and the expression on his ornamental face had varied between the blank and the idiotic. That the only woman in the world had miraculously appeared at Sagamore Lodge he had heard from Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent at dinner the evening before.
That she already knew of his presence there he couldnot doubt. That she did not desire his presence he was fearsomely persuaded.
Clearly he must go—not at once, of course, to leave behind him a possibility for gossip at his abrupt departure. From the tongues of infants and well-fed club-men, good Lord deliver us!
He must go. Meanwhile he could easily avoid her.
And as he sat there, savoring all the pent-up bitterness poured out for him by destiny, there came a patter of padded feet in the hallway, the scrape of nails, a sniff at the door-sill, a whine, a frantic scratching. He leaned forward and opened the door. His Highness landed on the bed with one hysterical yelp and fell upon Langham, paw and muzzle.
When their affection had been temporarily satiated, the dog lay down on the bed, eyes riveted on his late master, and the man went over to his desk, drew a sheet of club paper towards him, found a pen, and wrote:
“Of course it is an unhappy coincidence, and I will go when I can do so decently—to-morrow morning. Meanwhile I shall be away all day fishing the West Branch, and shall return too late to dine at the club table.
“I wish you a happy sojourn here—”
This he reread and scratched out.
“I am glad you kept His Highness.”
This he also scratched out.
After a while he signed his name to the note, sealed it, and stepped into the hallway.
At the farther end of the passage the door of her room was ajar; a sunlit-scarlet curtain hung inside.
“Come here!” said Langham to the dog.
His Highness came with a single leap.
“Take it to … her,” said the man, under his breath. Then he turned sharply, picked up rod and creel, and descended the stairs.
Meanwhile His Highness entered his mistress’s chamber, with a polite scratch as a “by your leave!” and trotted up to her, holding out the note in his pink mouth.
She looked at the dog in astonishment. Then the handwriting on the envelope caught her eye.
As she did not offer to touch the missive, His Highness presently sat down and crowded up against her knees. Then he laid the letter in her lap.
Her expression became inscrutable as she picked up the letter; while she was reading it there was color in her cheeks; after she had read it there was less.
“I see no necessity,” she said to His Highness—“I see no necessity for his going. I think I ought to tell him so.… He overestimates the importance of a matter which does not concern him.… He is sublimely self-conscious, … a typical man. And if he presumes to believe that the hazard of our encounter is of the slightest moment … to me …”
The dog dropped his head in her lap.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that!” she said, almost sharply, but there was a dry catch in her throat when she spoke, and she laid one fair hand on the head of His Highness.
A few moments later she went down-stairs to the great hall, where she found Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent just finishing their morning cocktails.
When they could at last comprehend that she never began her breakfast with a cocktail, they conducted hersolemnly to the breakfast-room, seated her withempressement, and the coffee was served.
It was a delicious, old-fashioned, country breakfast—crisp trout, bacon, eggs, and mounds of fragrant flapjacks.
“Langham’s gone off to the West Branch; left duty’s compliments and all that sort of thing for you,” observed the Colonel, testing his coffee with an air.
His Highness, who had sniffed the bacon, got up on a chair where he could sit and view the table. Moisture gathered on his jet-black nose; he licked his jowl.
“You poor darling!” cried his mistress, rising impulsively, with her plate in her hand. She set the plate on the floor. It was cleaned with a snap, then carefully polished.
“You are fond of your dog, madam,” said the Major, much interested.
“He’s a fine one,” added the Colonel. “Gad! I took him for Langham’s champion at first.”
She bent her head over the dog’s plate.
Later she walked to the porch, followed by His Highness.
A lovely little path invited them on—a path made springy by trodden leaves; and the dog and his mistress strolled forth among clumps of hazel and silver-birches, past ranks of alders and Indian-willows, on across log bridges spanning tiny threads of streams which poured into the stony river.
The unceasing chorus of the birds freshened like wind in her ears. Spring echoes sounded from blue distances; the solemn congress of the forest trees in session murmured of summers past and summers to come.
How could her soul sink in the presence of the young world’s uplifting?
Her dog came back and looked up into her eyes. With a cry, which was half laughter, she raced with him along the path, scattering the wild birds into flight from bush and thicket.
Breathless, rosy, she halted at the river’s shallow edge.
Flung full length on the grass, she dipped her white fingers in the river, and dropped wind-flowers on the ripples to watch them dance away.
She listened to the world around her; it had much to say to her if she would only believe it. But she forced her mind back to her husband and lay brooding.
An old man in leggings and corduroys came stumping along the path; His Highness heard him coming and turned his keen head. Then he went and stood in front of his mistress, calm, inquisitive, dangerous.
“Mornin’, miss,” said the keeper; “I guess you must be one of our folks.”
“I am staying at the club-house,” she said, smiling, and sitting up on the grass.
“I’m old Peter, one o’ the guards,” he said. “Fine mornin’, miss, but a leetle bright for the fish—though I ain’t denyin’ that a small dark fly’d raise ’em; no’m. If I was sot on ketchin’ a mess o’ fish, I guess a hare’s-ear would do the business; yes’m. I jest passed Mr. Langham down to the forks, and I seed he was a-chuckin’ a hare’s-ear; an’ he riz ’em, too; yes’m.”
“How long have you been a keeper here?” she asked.
“How long, ’m? Waal, I was the fustest guard they had; yes’m. I live down here a piece. They boughtmy water rights; yes’m. An’ they give me the job. The president he sez to me, ‘Peter,’ he sez, jest like that—‘Peter, you was raised here; you know all them brooks an’ rivers like a mink; you stay right here an’ watch ’em, an’ I’ll do the squar’ by ye,’ he sez, jest like that. An’ he done it; yes’m.”
“So you knew the president, then?” she asked, in a low voice.
“Knew him?—him? Yes’m.”
The old man laughed a hollow, toothless laugh, and squinted out across the dazzling river.
“Knew him twenty year, I did. A good man, and fair at that. Why, I’ve seen him a-settin’ jest where you’re settin’ this minute—seen him a hundred times a-settin’ there.”
“Fishing?” she said, in an awed voice.
“Sometimes. Sometimes he was a-drinkin’ out o’ that silver pocket-pistol o’ his’n. He got drunk a lot up here; but he didn’t drink alone; no’m. There wasn’t a stingy hair in his head; he—”
“Do you mean the president?” she said, incredulously, almost angrily.
“Him? Yes’m. Him an’ Colonel Hyssop an’ Major Brent; they had good times in them days.”
“You knew the presidentbeforehis marriage,” she observed, coldly.
“Him? He wasn’t never married, miss!” said the old man, scornfully.
“Are you sure?” she asked, with a troubled smile.
“Sure? Yes’m. Why, the last time he was up here, three year come July Fourth, I seen him a-kissin’ an’ a-huggin’ of old man Dawson’s darter—”
She was on her feet in a flash. The old man stood there smiling his senile smile and squinting out across the water, absorbed in his garrulous reminiscence.
“Yes’m; all the folks down to the village was fond o’ the president, he was that jolly and free, an’ no stuck-up city airs; no’m; jest free and easy, an’ a-sparkin’ the gals with the best o’ them—”
The old man laughed and crossed his arms under the barrel of his shot-gun.
“Folks said he might o’ married old man Dawson’s darter if he’d lived. I dun’no’. I guess it was all fun. But I hear the gal took on awful when they told her he was dead; yes’m.”
Towards evening Langham waded across the river, drew in his dripping line, put up his rod, and counted and weighed his fish. Then, lighting a pipe, he reslung the heavy creel across his back and started up the darkening path. From his dripping tweeds the water oozed; his shoes wheezed and slopped at every step; he was tired, soaked, successful—but happy? Possibly.
It was dark when the lighted windows of the lodge twinkled across the hill; he struck out over the meadow, head bent, smoking furiously.
On the steps of the club-house Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent greeted him with the affected heartiness of men who disliked his angling methods; the steward brought out a pan; the fish were uncreeled, reweighed, measured, and entered on the club book.
“Finest creel this year, sir,” said the steward, admiringly.
The Major grew purple; the Colonel carefully remeasured the largest fish.
“Twenty-one inches, steward!” he said. “Wasn’t my big fish of last Thursday twenty-two?”
“Nineteen, sir,” said the steward, promptly.
“Then it shrank like the devil!” said the Colonel. “By gad! it must have shrunk in the creel!”
But Langham was in no mood to savor his triumph. He climbed the stairs wearily, leaving little puddles of water on each step, slopped down the hallway, entered his room, and sank into a chair, too weary, too sad even to think.
Presently he lighted his lamp. He dressed with his usual attention to detail, and touched the electric button above his bed.
“I’m going to-morrow morning,” he said to the servant who came; “return in an hour and pack my traps.”
Langham sat down. He had no inclination for dinner. With his chin propped on his clinched hands he sat there thinking. A sound fell on his ear, the closing of a door at the end of the hall, the padded pattering of a dog’s feet, a scratching, a whine.
He opened his door; the bull-terrier trotted in and stood before him in silence. His Highness held in his mouth a letter.
Langham took the note with hands that shook. He could scarcely steady them to open the envelope; he could scarcely see to read the line:
“Why are you going away?”
He rose, made his way to his desk like a blind man, and wrote,
“Because I love you.”
His Highness bore the missive away.
For an hour he sat there in the lamp-lit room. The servant came to pack up for him, but he sent the man back, saying that hemightchange his mind. Then he resumed his waiting, his head buried in his hands. At last, when he could endure the silence no longer, he rose and walked the floor, backward, forward, pausing breathless to listen for the patter of the dog’s feet in the hall. But no sound came; he stole to the door and listened, then stepped into the hall. The light still burned in her room, streaming out through the transom.
She would never send another message to him by His Highness; he understood that now. How he cursed himself for his momentary delusion! how he scorned himself for reading anything but friendly kindness in her message! how he burned with self-contempt for his raw, brutal reply, crude as the blurted offer of a yokel!
That settled the matter. If he had any decency left, he must never offend her eyes again. How could he have hoped? How could he have done it? Here, too!—here in this place so sanctified to her by associations—here, whither she had come upon her pious pilgrimage—here, where at least he might have left her to her dead!
Suddenly, as he stood there, her door opened. She saw him standing there. For a full minute they faced each other. Presently His Highness emerged from behind his mistress and trotted out into the hall.
Behind His Highness came his mistress, slowly, moreslowly. The dog carefully held a letter between his teeth, and when Langham saw it he sprang forward eagerly.
“No, no!” she said. “I did not mean—I cannot—I cannot— Give me back the letter!”
He had the letter in his hand; her hand fell over it; the color surged into her face and neck. The letter dropped from her yielding hand; the thrill from their interlocked fingers made her faint, and she swayed forward towards him, so close that their lips touched, then clung, crushed in their first kiss.…
Meanwhile His Highness picked up the letter and stood politely waiting.
Contents
BEFOREthe members of the Sagamore Fish and Game Association had erected their handsome club-house, and before they had begun to purchase those thousands of acres of forest, mountain, and stream which now belonged to them, a speculative lumberman with no capital, named O’Hara, built the white house across the river on a few acres of inherited property, settled himself comfortably with his wife and child, and prepared to acquire all the timber in sight at a few dollars an acre … on credit. For thus, thought he, is the beginning of all millionaires.
So certain was O’Hara of ultimately cornering the standing timber that he took his time about it, never dreaming that a rival might disturb him in the wilderness of Sagamore County.
He began in the woodland which he had inherited, which ran for a mile on either side of the river. This he leisurely cut, hired a few river drivers, ran a few logs to Foxville, and made money.
Now he was ready to extend business on a greater scale; but when he came to open negotiations with thescore or more of landholders, he found himself in the alarming position of a bidder against an unknown but clever rival, who watched, waited, and quietly forestalled his every movement.
It took a long time for O’Hara to discover that he was fighting a combination of fifteen wealthy gentlemen from New York. Finally, when the Sagamore Club, limited to fifteen, had completed operations, O’Hara suddenly perceived that he was bottled up in the strip of worthless land which he had inherited, surrounded by thousands of acres of preserved property—outwitted, powerless, completely hemmed in. And that, too, with the best log-driving water betwixt Foxville and Canada washing the very door-sill of his own home.
At first he naturally offered to sell, but the club’s small offer enraged him, and he swore that he would never sell them an inch of his land. He watched the new club-house which was slowly taking shape under the trowels of masons and the mallets of carpenters; and his wrath grew as grew the house.
The man’s nature began to change; an inextinguishable hatred for these people took possession of him, became his mania, his existence.
His wife died; he sent his child to a convent school in Canada and remained to watch. He did the club what damage he could, posting his property, and as much of the river as he controlled. But he could not legally prevent fishermen from wading the stream and fishing; so he filled the waters with sawdust, logs, barbed-wire, brambles, and brush, choking it so that no living creature, except perhaps a mink, could catch a fish in it.
The club protested, and then offered to buy the landon O’Hara’s own terms. O’Hara cursed them and built a dam without a fishway, and sat beside it nights with a loaded shot-gun.
He still had a few dollars left; he wanted millions to crush these rich men who had come here to mock him and take the bread out of his mouth for their summer’s sport.
He had a shrewd young friend in New York, named Amasa Munn. Through this man, O’Hara began to speculate in every wild-cat scheme that squalled aloud for public support; and between Munn and the wild-cats his little fortune spread its wings of gold and soared away, leaving him a wreck on his wrecked land.
But he could still find strength to watch the spite dam with his shot-gun. One day a better scheme came into his unbalanced brain; he broke the dam and sent for Munn. Between them they laid a plan to ruin forever the trout-fishing in the Sagamore; and Munn, taking the last of O’Hara’s money as a bribe, actually secured several barrels full of live pickerel, and shipped them to the nearest station on the Sagamore and Inland Railway.
But here the club watchers caught Munn, and held him and his fish for the game-wardens. The penalty for introducing trout-destroying pickerel into waters inhabited by trout was a heavy fine. Munn was guilty only in intent, but the club keepers swore falsely, and Peyster Sprowl, a lawyer and also the new president of the Sagamore Club, pushed the case; and Munn went to jail, having no money left to purge his sentence.
O’Hara, wild with rage, wrote, threatening Sprowl.
Then Sprowl did a vindictive and therefore foolishthing: he swore out a warrant for O’Hara’s arrest, charging him with blackmail.
The case was tried in Foxville, and O’Hara was acquitted. But a chance word or two during the testimony frightened the club and gave O’Hara the opportunity of his life. He went to New York and scraped up enough money for his purpose, which was to search the titles of the lands controlled by the Sagamore Club.
He worked secretly, grubbing, saving, starving; he ferreted out the original grants covering nine-tenths of Sagamore County; he disinterred the O’Hara patent of 1760; and then he began to understand that his title to the entire Sagamore Club property was worth the services, on spec, of any first-class Centre Street shyster.
The club got wind of this and appointed Peyster Sprowl, in his capacity of lawyer and president of the club, to find out how much of a claim O’Hara really had. The club also placed the emergency fund of one hundred thousand dollars at Sprowl’s command withcarte-blancheorders to arrest a suit and satisfy any claim that could not be beaten by money and talent.
Now it took Sprowl a very short time to discover that O’Hara’s claim was probably valid enough to oust the club from three-quarters of its present holdings.
He tried to see O’Hara, but the lumberman refused to be interviewed, and promptly began proceedings. He also made his will; for he was a sick man. Then he became a sicker man, and suspended proceedings and sent for his little daughter.
Before she arrived he called Munn in, gave him a packet of papers, and made him burn them before his eyes.
“They’re the papers in my case,” he said. “I’m dying; I’ve fought too hard. I don’t want my child to fight when I’m dead. And there’s nothing in my claim, anyway.” This was a lie, and Munn suspected it.
When the child, Eileen, arrived, O’Hara was nearly dead, but he gathered sufficient strength to shove a locked steel box towards his daughter and tell her to keep it from Munn, and keep it locked until she found an honest man in the world.
The next morning O’Hara appeared to be much better. His friend Munn came to see him; also came Peyster Sprowl in some alarm, on the matter of the proceedings threatened. But O’Hara turned his back on them both and calmly closed his eyes and ears to their presence.
Munn went out of the room, but laid his large, thin ear against the door. Sprowl worried O’Hara for an hour, but, getting no reply from the man in the bed, withdrew at last with considerable violence.
O’Hara, however, had fooled them both: he had been dead all the while.
The day after the funeral, Sprowl came back to look for O’Hara’s daughter; and as he peeped into the door of the squalid flat he saw a thin, yellow-eyed young man, with a bony face, all furry in promise of future whiskers, rummaging through O’Hara’s effects. This young gentleman was Munn.
In a dark corner of the disordered room sat the child, Eileen, a white, shadowy elf of six, reading in the Book of Common Prayer.
Sprowl entered the room; Munn looked up, then coolly continued to rummage.
Sprowl first addressed himself to the child, in a heavy, patronizing voice:
“It’s too dark to read there in that corner, young one. Take your book out into the hall.”
“I can see better to read in the dark,” said the child, lifting her great, dark-blue eyes.
“Go out into the hall,” said Sprowl, sharply.
The child shrank back, and went, taking her little jacket in one hand, her battered travelling-satchel in the other.
If the two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to her own profit.
“Munn,” said Sprowl, lighting a cigar, “what is there in this business?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m done,” observed Munn, coolly.
Sprowl sat down on the bed where O’Hara had died, cocked the cigar up in his mouth, and blew smoke, musingly, at the ceiling.
Munn found nothing—not a scrap of paper, not a line. This staggered him, but he did not intend that Sprowl should know it.
“Found what you want?” asked Sprowl, comfortably.
“Yes,” replied Munn.
“Belong to the kid?”
“Yes; I’m her guardian.”
The men measured each other in silence for a minute.
“What will you take to keep quiet?” asked Sprowl. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”
“I want five thousand,” said Munn, firmly.
“I’ll double it for the papers,” said Sprowl.
Munn waited. “There’s not a paper left,” he said; “O’Hara made me burn ’em.”
“Twenty thousand for the papers,” said Sprowl, calmly.
“My God, Mr. Sprowl!” growled Munn, white and sweating with anguish. “I’d give them to you for half that if I had them. Can’t you believe me? I saw O’Hara burn them.”
“What were you rummaging for, then?” demanded Sprowl.
“For anything—to get a hold on you,” said Munn, sullenly.
“Blackmail?”
Munn was silent.
“Oh,” said Sprowl, lazily. “I think I’ll be going, then—”
Munn barred his exit, choking with anger.
“You give me five thousand dollars, or I’ll stir ’em up to look into your titles!” he snarled.
Sprowl regarded him with contempt; then another idea struck him, an idea that turned his fat face first to ashes, then to fire.
A month later Sprowl returned to the Sagamore Club, triumphant, good-humored, and exceedingly contented. But he had, he explained, only succeeded in saving the club at the cost of the entire emergency fund—one hundred thousand dollars—which, after all, was a drop in the bucket to the remaining fourteen members.
The victory would have been complete if Sprowl had also been able to purchase the square mile of land latelyoccupied by O’Hara. But this belonged to O’Hara’s daughter, and the child flatly refused to part with it.
“You’ll have to wait for the little slut to change her mind,” observed Munn to Sprowl. And, as there was nothing else to do, Sprowl and the club waited.
Trouble appeared to be over for the Sagamore Club. Munn disappeared; the daughter was not to be found; the long-coveted land remained tenantless.
Of course, the Sagamore Club encountered the petty difficulties and annoyances to which similar clubs are sooner or later subjected; disputes with neighboring land-owners were gradually adjusted; troubles arising from poachers, dishonest keepers, and night guards had been, and continued to be, settled without harshness or rancor; minks, otters, herons, kingfishers, and other undesirable intruders were kept within limits by the guns of the watchers, although by no means exterminated; and the wealthy club was steadily but unostentatiously making vast additions to its splendid tracts of forest, hill, and river land.
After a decent interval the Sagamore Club made cautious inquiries concerning the property of the late O’Hara, only to learn that the land had been claimed by Munn, and that taxes were paid on it by that individual.
For fifteen years the O’Hara house remained tenantless; anglers from the club fished freely through the mile of river; the name of Munn had been forgotten save by the club’s treasurer, secretary, and president, Peyster Sprowl.
However, the members of the club never forgot that in the centre of their magnificent domain lay a squaremile which did not belong to them; and they longed to possess it as better people than they have coveted treasures not laid up on earth.
The relations existing between the members of the Sagamore Club continued harmonious in as far as their social intercourse and the general acquisitive policy of the club was concerned.
There existed, of course, that tacit mutual derision based upon individual sporting methods, individual preferences, obstinate theories concerning the choice of rods, reels, lines, and the killing properties of favorite trout-flies.
Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop continued to nag and sneer at each other all day long, yet they remained as mutually dependent upon each other as David and Jonathan. For thirty years the old gentlemen had angled in company, and gathered inspiration out of the same books, the same surroundings, the same flask.
They were the only guests at the club-house that wet May in 1900, although Peyster Sprowl was expected in June, and young Dr. Lansing had wired that he might arrive any day.
An evening rain-storm was drenching the leaded panes in the smoking-room; Colonel Hyssop drummed accompaniment on the windows and smoked sulkily, looking across the river towards the O’Hara house, just visible through the pelting downpour.
“Irritates me every time I see it,” he said.
“Some day,” observed Major Brent, comfortably, “I’m going to astonish you all.”
“How?” demanded the Colonel, tersely.
The Major examined the end of his cigarette with a cunning smile.
“It isn’t for sale, is it?” asked the Colonel. “Don’t try to be mysterious; it irritates me.”
Major Brent savored his cigarette leisurely.
“Can you keep a secret?” he inquired.
The Colonel intimated profanely that he could.
“Well, then,” said the Major, in calm triumph, “there’s a tax sale on to-morrow at Foxville.”
“Not the O’Hara place?” asked the Colonel, excited.
The Major winked. “I’ll fix it,” he said, with a patronizing squint at his empty glass.
But he did not “fix it” exactly as he intended; the taxes on the O’Hara place were being paid at that very moment.
He found it out next day, when he drove over to Foxville; he also learned that the Rev. Amasa Munn, Prophet of the Shining Band Community, had paid the taxes and was preparing to quit Maine and re-establish his colony of fanatics on the O’Hara land, in the very centre and heart of the wealthiest and most rigidly exclusive country club in America.
That night the frightened Major telegraphed to Munnville, Maine, an offer to buy the O’Hara place at double its real value. The business-like message ended: “Wire reply at my expense.”
The next morning an incoherent reply came by wire, at the Major’s expense, refusing to sell, and quoting several passages of Scripture at Western Union rates per word.
The operator at the station counted the words carefully, and collected eight dollars and fourteencents from the Major, whose fury deprived him of speech.
Colonel Hyssop awaited his comrade at the club-house, nervously pacing the long veranda, gnawing his cigar. “Hello!” he called out, as Major Brent waddled up. “Have you bought the O’Hara place for us?”
The Major made no attempt to reply; he panted violently at the Colonel, then began to run about, taking little, short, distracted steps.
“Made a mess of it?” inquired the Colonel, with a badly concealed sneer.
He eyed the Major in deepening displeasure. “If you get any redder in the face you’ll blow up,” he said, coldly; “and I don’t propose to have you spatter me.”
“He—he’s an impudent swindler!” hissed the Major, convulsively.
The Colonel sniffed: “I expected it. What of it? After all, there’s nobody on the farm to annoy us, is there?”
“Wait!” groaned the Major—“wait!” and he toddled into the hall and fell on a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands.
When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatened calamity, he utterly refused to credit it.
“Rubbish!” he said, calmly—“rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn is holding out for more money, d’ye see? Rubbish! rubbish! It’s blackmail, d’ye see?”
“Do you think so?” faltered the Major, hopefully. “It isn’t possible that they mean to come, is it? Fancy all those fanatics shouting about under our windows—”
“Rubbish!” said the Colonel, calmly. “I’ll write to the fellow myself.”
All through that rainy month of May the two old cronies had the club-house to themselves; they slopped about together, fishing cheek by jowl as they had fished for thirty years; at night they sat late over their toddy, and disputed and bickered and wagged their fingers at each other, and went to bed with the perfect gravity of gentlemen who could hold their own with any toddy ever brewed.
No reply came to the Colonel, but that did not discourage him.
“They are playing a waiting game,” he said, sagely. “This man Munn has bought the land from O’Hara’s daughter for a song, and he means to bleed us. I’ll write to Sprowl; he’ll fix things.”
Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay, arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn’s object was to squeeze the club by threats.
The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, Master of Fox-hounds, Shadowbrook, appeared with his wife, the celebrated beauty, Agatha Sprowl,néeVan Guilder.
Sprowl, now immensely large and fat, had few cares in life beyond an anxious apprehension concerning the durability of his own digestion. However, he was still able to make a midnight mouthful of a Welsh rarebit on a hot mince-pie, and wash it down with a quart of champagne, and so the world went very well with him, even if it wabbled a trifle for his handsome wife.
“She’s lovely enough,” said Colonel Hyssop, gallantly, “to set every star in heaven wabbling.” To which the bull-necked Major assented with an ever-hopeless attempt to bend at the waistband.
Meanwhile the Rev. Amasa Munn and his flock, the Shining Band, arrived at Foxville in six farm wagons, singing “Roll, Jordan!”
Of their arrival Sprowl was totally unconscious, the Colonel having forgotten to inform him of the threatened invasion.
The members of the Sagamore Club heard the news next morning at a late breakfast. Major Brent, who had been fishing early up-stream, bore the news, and delivered it in an incoherent bellow.
“What d’ye mean by that?” demanded Colonel Hyssop, setting down his cocktail with unsteady fingers.
“Mean?” roared the Major; “I mean that Munn and a lot o’ women are sitting on the river-bank and singing ‘Home Again’!”
The news jarred everybody, but the effect of it upon the president, Peyster Sprowl, appeared to be out of all proportion to its gravity. That gentleman’s face was white as death; and the Major noticed it.
“You’ll have to rid us of this mob,” said the Major, slowly.
Sprowl lifted his heavy, overfed face from his plate. “I’ll attend to it,” he said, hoarsely, and swallowed a pint of claret.
“I think it is amusing,” said Agatha Sprowl, looking across the table at Coursay.
“Amusing, madam!” burst out the Major. “They’ll be doing their laundry in our river next!”
“Soapsuds in my favorite pools!” bawled the Colonel. “Damme if I’ll permit it!”
“Sprowl ought to settle them,” said Lansing, good-naturedly. “It may cost us a few thousands, but Sprowl will do the work this time as he did it before.”
Sprowl choked in his claret, turned a vivid beef-color, and wiped his chin. His appetite was ruined. He hoped the ruin would stop there.
“What harm will they do?” asked Coursay, seriously—“beyond the soapsuds?”
“They’ll fish, they’ll throw tin cans in the water, they’ll keep us awake with their fanatical powwows—confound it, haven’t I seen that sort of thing?” said the Major, passionately. “Yes, I have, at nigger camp-meetings! And these people beat the niggers at that sort of thing!”
“Leave ’em to me,” repeated Peyster Sprowl, thickly, and began on another chop from force of habit.
“About fifteen years ago,” said the Colonel, “there was some talk about our title. You fixed that, didn’t you, Sprowl?”
“Yes,” said Sprowl, with parched lips.
“Of course,” muttered the Major; “it cost us a cool hundred thousand to perfect our title. Thank God it’s settled.”
Sprowl’s immense body turned perfectly cold; he buried his face in his glass and drained it. Then the shrimp-color returned to his neck and ears, and deepened to scarlet. When the earth ceased reeling before his apoplectic eyes, he looked around, furtively. Again the scene in O’Hara’s death-chamber came to him; thethreat of Munn, who had got wind of the true situation, and the bribing of Munn to silence.
But the club had given Sprowl one hundred thousand dollars to perfect its title; and Sprowl had reported the title perfect, all proceedings ended, and the payment of one hundred thousand dollars to Amasa Munn, as guardian of the child of O’Hara, in full payment for the O’Hara claims to the club property.
Sprowl’s coolness began to return. If five thousand dollars had stopped Munn’s mouth once, it might stop it again. Besides, how could Munn know that Sprowl had kept for his own uses ninety-five thousand dollars of his club’s money, and had founded upon it the House of Sprowl of many millions? He was quite cool now—a trifle anxious to know what Munn meant to ask for, but confident that his millions were a buckler and a shield to the honored name of Sprowl.
“I’ll see this fellow, Munn, after breakfast,” he said, lighting an expensive cigar.
“I’ll go with you,” volunteered Lansing, casually, strolling out towards the veranda.
“No, no!” called out Sprowl; “you’ll only hamper me.” But Lansing did not hear him outside in the sunshine.
Agatha Sprowl laid one fair, heavily ringed hand on the table and pushed her chair back. The Major gallantly waddled to withdraw her chair; she rose with a gesture of thanks, and a glance which shot the Major through and through—a wound he never could accustom himself to receive with stoicism.
Mrs. Sprowl turned carelessly away, followed by her two Great Danes—a superb trio, woman and dogs beautifullybuilt and groomed, and expensive enough to please even such an amateur as Peyster Sprowl, M.F.H.
“Gad, Sprowl!” sputtered the Major, “your wife grows handsomer every minute—and you grow fatter.”
Sprowl, midway in a glass of claret, said: “This simple backwoods régime is what she and I need.”
Agatha Sprowl was certainly handsome, but the Major’s eyesight was none of the best. She had not been growing younger; there were lines; also a discreet employment of tints on a very silky skin, which was not quite as fresh as it had once been.
Dr. Lansing, strolling on the veranda with his pipe, met her and her big dogs turning the corner in full sunlight. Coursay was with her, his eager, flushed face close to hers; but he fell back when he saw his kinsman Lansing, and presently retired to the lawn to unreel and dry out a couple of wet silk lines.
Agatha Sprowl sat down on the veranda railing, exchanging a gay smile across the lawn with Coursay; then her dark eyes met Lansing’s steel-gray ones.
“Good-morning, once more,” she said, mockingly.
He returned her greeting, and began to change his mist leader for a white one.
“Will you kindly let Jack Coursay alone?” she said, in a low voice.
“No,” he replied, in the same tone.
“Are you serious?” she asked, as though the idea amused her.
“Of course,” he replied, pleasantly.
“Is it true that you came here because he came?” she inquired, with faint sarcasm in her eyes.
“Yes,” he answered, with perfect good-nature. “Yousee he’s my own kin; you see I’m the old-fashioned sort—a perfect fool, Mrs. Sprowl.”
There was a silence; he unwound the glistening leader; she flicked at shadows with her dog-whip; the Great Danes yawned and laid their heavy heads against her knees.
“Then youarea fool,” she concluded, serenely.
He was young enough to redden.
Three years ago she had thought it time to marry somebody, if she ever intended to marry at all; so she threw over half a dozen young fellows like Coursay, and married Sprowl. For two years her beauty, audacity, and imprudence kept a metropolis and two capitals in food for scandal. And now for a year gossip was coupling her name with Coursay’s.
“I warned you at Palm Beach that I’d stop this,” said Lansing, looking directly into her eyes. “You see, I know his mother.”
“Stop what?” she asked, coolly.
He went on: “Jack is a curiously decent boy; he views his danger without panic, but with considerable surprise. But nobody can tell what he may do. As for me, I’m indifferent, liberal, and reasonable in my views of … other people’s conduct. But Jack is not one of those ‘other people,’ you see.”
“AndIam?” she suggested, serenely.
“Exactly; I’m not your keeper.”
“So you confine your attention to Jack and the Decalogue?”
“As for the Commandments,” observed Lansing, “any ass can shatter them with his hind heels, so why should he? If hemustbe an ass, let him be an original ass—not a cur.”
“A cur,” repeated Agatha Sprowl, unsteadily.
“Anaffaire de cœurwith a married woman is an affair do cur,” said Lansing, calmly—“Gallicize it as you wish, make it smart and fashionable as you can. I told you I was old-fashioned.… And I mean it, madam.”
The leader had eluded him; he uncoiled it again; she mechanically took it between her delicate fingers and held it steady while he measured and shortened it by six inches.
“Do you think,” she said, between her teeth, “that it is your mission to padlock me tothat—in there?”
Lansing turned, following her eyes. She was looking at her husband.
“No,” replied Lansing, serenely; “but I shall see that you don’t transfer the padlock to …that, outthere”—glancing at Coursay on the lawn.
“Try it,” she breathed, and let go of the leader, which flew up in silvery crinkles, the cast of brightly colored flies dancing in the sunshine.
“Oh, let him alone,” said Lansing, wearily; “all the men in Manhattan are drivelling about you. Let him go; he’s a sorry trophy—and there’s no natural treachery in him; … it’s not in our blood; … it’s too cheap for us, and we can’t help saying so when we’re in our right minds.”
There was a little color left in her face when she stood up, her hands resting on the spiked collars of her dogs. “The trouble with you,” she said, smiling adorably, “is your innate delicacy.”
“I know I am brutal,” he said, grimly; “let him alone.”
She gave him a pretty salutation, crossed the lawn, passed her husband, who had just ridden up on a powerfulsorrel, and called brightly to Coursay: “Take me fishing, Jack, or I’ll yawn my head off my shoulders.”
Before Lansing could recover his wits the audacious beauty had stepped into the canoe at the edge of the lawn, and young Coursay, eager and radiant, gave a flourish to his paddle, and drove it into the glittering water.
If Sprowl found anything disturbing to his peace of mind in the proceeding, he did not betray it. He sat hunched up on his big sorrel, eyes fixed on the distant clearing, where the white gable-end of O’Hara’s house rose among the trees.
Suddenly he wheeled his mount and galloped off up the river road; the sun glowed on his broad back, and struck fire on his spurs, then horse and rider were gone into the green shadows of the woods.
To play spy was not included in Lansing’s duties as he understood them. He gave one disgusted glance after the canoe, shrugged, set fire to the tobacco in his pipe, and started slowly along the river towards O’Hara’s with a vague idea of lending counsel, aid, and countenance to his president during the expected interview with Munn.
At the turn of the road he met Major Brent and old Peter, the head-keeper. The latter stood polishing the barrels of his shot-gun with a red bandanna; the Major was fuming and wagging his head.
“Doctor!” he called out, when Lansing appeared; “Peter says they raised the devil down at O’Hara’s last night! This can’t go on, d’ye see! No, by Heaven!”
“What were they doing, Peter?” asked Lansing, coming up to where the old man stood.
“Them Shinin’ Banders? Waal, sir, they was kinder rigged out in white night-gounds—robes o’ Jordan they call ’em—an’ they had rubbed some kind o’ shiny stuff—like matches—all over these there night-gounds, an’ then they sang a spell, an’ then they all sot down on the edge o’ the river.”
“Is that all?” asked Lansing, laughing.
“Wait!” growled the Major.
“Waal,” continued old Peter, “the shinin’ stuff on them night-gounds was that bright that I seen the fishes swimmin’ round kinder dazed like. ‘Gosh!’ sez I to m’self, it’s like a Jack a-drawnin’ them trout—yaas’r. So I hollers out, ‘Here! You Shinin’ Band folk, you air a-drawin’ the trout. Quit it!’ sez I, ha’sh an’ pert-like. Then that there Munn, the Prophet, he up an’ hollers, ‘Hark how the heathen rage!’ he hollers. An’ with that, blamed if he didn’t sling a big net into the river, an’ all them Shinin’ Banders ketched holt an’ they drawed it clean up-stream. ‘Quit that!’ I hollers, ‘it’s agin the game laws!’ But the Prophet he hollers back, ‘Hark how the heathen rage!’ Then they drawed that there net out, an’ it were full o’ trout, big an’ little—”
“Great Heaven!” roared the Major, black in the face.
“I think,” said Lansing, quietly, “that I’ll walk down to O’Hara’s and reason with our friend Munn. Sprowl may want a man to help him in this matter.”